Sustainability

Branding and Marketing   Regulatory environment Sustainable business practices Optimize supply chain Improve Energy Efficiencies Sustainability Risk Management Carbon trading Corporate sustainability strategy

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Arcus offers counsel and expertise on the business impact of climate change to leading organizatons. We help clients accelerate the shift toward a low carbon footprint and economy. In the past year, we have helped around 20 clients in the field of change management associated with sustainable practices.

 Our services include client successes in the following areas:

 

Regulatory environment – Our research with 1,200 business leaders confirms that the regulatory environment and related complexities are a significant concern. Developing scenarios on future carbon regulation and carbon prices, rent shifts in the value chain, stakeholder impact and the appropriate strategic response

 

Sustainable business practices – Develop low carbon business practices that have a significant impact on revenue, costs and consumer demand.

 

Optimize supply chain– Our assessment tools enable clients to benchmark their supply chain carbon footprint and optimize key components of their operations.

 

Improve Energy Efficiencies – Helping a major city to achieve emission reduction targets for buildings despite increasing demand for energy and growing emissions

 

Sustainability Risk Management – Our Sustainability Risk Management services are aimed at helping our clients evaluate companies across these criteria to better understand which companies are doing a better job than their peers at incorporating these issues into the broader governance of the organization.

 

Carbon trading – Conducting due diligences for low-/high-carbon targets, including the assessment of strategic options for benefiting from carbon trading opportunities and the development of emission certificate trading strategies. Setting up a trading unit for a major utility

 

Corporate sustainability strategy – Our evaluation tools give clients a high level of transparency in their operations and opportunities to identify high cost areas related potential sustainable practices. Outcomes include lower carbon footprints, higher employee morale and stronger corporate sustainability "green" reputations.

World-Class Climate Change and Sustainability Expertise

 

We have deep expertise on issues including abatement cost curves, the business impact of carbon regulation, emissions trading, biofuels and changing asset valuation.

 

Our abatement cost curve allows clients to understand the size and cost of measures for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. It allows clients to identify business opportunities, which emerge from taking measures to reduce emissions early on, and it is being utilized by clients across a broad range of sectors and geographies. In addition, efforts to develop seven country specific abatement cost curves are ongoing or have already been completed since the original global abatement work (Germany, the U.S., the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan).

 

Knowledge efforts and broad experience from client work in all major renewable energy sources from biofuels to geothermal, in low carbon technologies like carbon capture and storage, on energy demand models, and in-depths perspectives for industries like power, automotive and chemicals are completing our portfolio of expertise.

 

World-class problem-solving approaches

 

We support clients in the assessment of their businesses’ exposure to climate change and its effect on market dynamics and the regulatory environment. Together, we develop strategies for meeting the challenges and for utilising our clients’ strengths to pursue emerging business opportunities. We are also helping our clients to reduce carbon emissions internally, along their supply chains and the carbon footprint related to their products. Recent efforts for clients include topics like:

 

 Regulatory strategy – Developing scenarios on future carbon regulation and carbon prices, rent shifts in the value chain, stakeholder impact and the appropriate strategic response

 

 Value at stake – Assessing the economic impact from climate change on future demand and on margins for the existing business

 

 Low carbon business opportunities – Identification of low carbon business opportunities along the abatement cost curve and from changes in consumer demand

 

 Low carbon supply chain management – Assessment of means, requirements and business implications of reducing carbon emissions along the supply chain

 

 Energy efficiency gains – Helping a major city to achieve emission reduction targets for buildings despite increasing demand for energy and growing emissions

 

 Smart metering – Designing a strategy to embrace and drive climate change related opportunities in gas and electric transmission and distribution businesses

 

 Environmental finance – Development of an environmental finance business: identification of green investment opportunities and designing the required organization

 

 Carbon trading – Conducting due diligences for low-/high-carbon targets, including the assessment of strategic options for benefiting from carbon trading opportunities and the development of emission certificate trading strategies. Setting up a trading unit for a major utility

 

 Corporate climate change strategy – Evaluating means to reduce a company's carbon footprint as well as emissions caused along the value chain and understand the business implications of positioning "green"

 

 Sustainability, – support in the development of environmental strategies, in building internal organization to drive strategy and in building "green" businesses

 

Superior industry insight and leading functional expertise

 

Our Climate Change Special Initiative is a cross–functional and cross–industry effort, bringing to bear latest insights, our experience and expertise from all parts of our firm – including deep understanding of climate change, its implications for industries like travel and logistics, biofuels and financial services as well as climate change strategy, low carbon operations, low carbon growth markets and risk management. More than 750 colleagues from across McKinsey are participating in this work, with scientific backgrounds ranging from climate science or environmental economics to waste engineering, oceanography science, numeric weather modeling, international affairs, agriculture and forestry, and nuclear or fuel cells. They bring past career experience from the UNDP in Congo, waste management in Chile, financial restructuring in China, and from the renewable energy departments of global petroleum companies.

 

Waste reduction and sustainability implementation

Cost savings through energy efficiency, waste reduction, reduced risk, and increased workforce productivity. Arcus recognizes that the value of a great plan is only realized once the plan is put in to action – for this reason, we are committed to getting our clients to start walking their own talk as soon as possible. Read more.

 

Benefits:

• Cost savings initiatives through energy use & process efficiencies
  
• Waste reduction strategies to lower operational expenses
  
• Greening your Supply Chain, Products and Services; tactics for making each of these more sustainable
  
• Greening your organization: practices to make office operations more efficient
  
• Employee engagement: workshops on sustainability; recommendations for improved life-work balance leading to increased productivity and retention

Strategic and Business Plan Development

 

Arcus works hand-in-hand with organizations to develop their sustainability goals and then maps out the strategy to bring that vision to reality. We don’t write plans just to have them read once and then put on a shelf; we want to see them implemented. We also make sure that we match each step with the company’s budget so that the plan is realistic and is consistent with cash flow.

 

 Our experience is that incorporation of sustainability or climate change into a business strategy is something new for most clients. The concept is often met with some scepticism at first, which is why it is so important for them to experience early and easy success. We ensure clients accomplish up-front achievement of meaningful, simple cost-effective goals to build momentum for tackling the more challenging, further-reaching goals. 

Clean Technology Expertise

We offer regional & national policy expertise as well as business start-up experience. Arcus has consulted to several renewable energy and clean tech organizations and has become increasingly involved in efforts to galvanize and grow targeted clean technology sectors in North America.

 

Recently, an Arcus team facilitated a Clean Technology retreat to catalyze a Fortune 500 company's goal of becoming a global leader in this industry. Attending stakeholders included:

 

- Industry Executives

- Public Officials

- Entrepreneurs

- Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists

- University Representatives

Arcus uses results from these workshops to help organizations develop a plan that involves both short and long-term strategies, as well as recommended action steps the Clean Tech sector could take immediately with regard to:

- Public policy

- Funding mechanisms

- Research and commercialization

- Business competitiveness

- Workforce development and Communication

Reports

  Learn about the carbon market and trends

  Benchmark your organizations risk profile against 2000 other organizations

  Create a customized carbon reduction strategy

Arcus Green Business Report
Only 17% of consumers are willing to pay a premium for green products and services.

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Business Implications of Climate Change

A survey of 1,200 business leaders on economic, environmental, and social performance.